Halle Berry found growing up as a mixed-race child to be complicated.
The Oscar-winning actress appeared on the podcast Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, where the titular host delved into Berry’s family history and the implications of having a white mother and Black father, the latter of whom was absent.
“The thing about that kind of childhood was looking like me, obviously being Black, but having a white mother, all girls, kids, you want to be like your mom, right?” Berry said at the 16-minute, 40-second mark in the video below.
“But it was painfully impossible for me to be anything like my mother, right? She was blonde, blue eyes, everything I wasn't.”
The 59-year-old went on to explain that she “could never” look like her mother, and she made efforts to try, including wearing a “yellow towel” around her head to pretend she “had blonde hair.”
“I felt very confused about my identity growing up. Even though we lived in an all-Black neighborhood, I still wanted to be like my mother,” Berry added. “If my mother's white and I'm Black, what does that mean? Who am I? Am I really Black? Am I half Black? Am I mixed? Am I not mixed? I don't feel very white. I don't look very white, but yet I have this white mother. It's part of me. There was a lot of confusion growing up.”
Berry said that her mother helped her realize that she isn’t white.
“She told me, ‘You will be identified as you are. You will be perceived as Black. You are Black, and if you accept this part of you, your life will be indelibly easier,’” the actress recalled.
Halle often speaks candidly about race. She recently discussed winning the 2002 Academy Award for best actress for her performance in Monster's Ball. She was the first Black woman and remains the only Black woman to have taken home the award.
“That Oscar didn’t necessarily change the course of my career,” Berry told The Cut earlier this month. “After I won it, I thought there was going to be, like, a script truck showing up outside my front door. While I was wildly proud of it, I was still Black that next morning.”
She pointed out that the same barriers in Hollywood endured.
“The morning after, I thought, ‘Wow, I was chosen to open a door.’ And then, to have no one … I question, ‘Was that an important moment, or was it just an important moment for me?’”